into which it dissolved made the central authority of the Caliph a mere fiction, incapable of efficient exercise of power. Even the states, prominent from their position and thus better situated to maintain order in the Holy Land, as it was their interest to do, could not spare the military force essential for the governor of the Hijaz (West Arabia). Thus the holiest, the least productive, and most difficult-to-rule portion of the Moslem Empire was practically given over to confusion as its natural vital element, and the more vigorous Mohammedan countries limited themselves to the protection of the pilgrim caravans which set out from their realms for Arabia, and of such of their own subjects as had settled there.
Out of the chaos in West Arabia, resulting from the disintegration of the Islamic Empire, was born the Shereefate
